I Hope to Find the One... Book
Unless I intentionally made plans, my Saturdays are now usually uneventful and unproductive (think: PJs all day, lounging in bed, etc). My younger self would have lamented all the wasted time I could've used to get so many other personal projects done or schedule a meet-up (today's alternative would be a Zoom call, thanks to the pandemic), but the moment I hit my birthday last year, my body knew it was done with all that. I now welcome the idea of staying inside and just taking things slow. The memes weren't lying!
I know I mentioned this bit before in a previous post, but now I'm seriously thinking of getting back to reading. The reason I say this was because of an incident that happened a few nights ago- my mom came up to me and asked if I could get a copy of The Witcher series for her to read since Netflix hasn't come up with new episodes. Luckily, she already had a library card (which I pushed her to get a few years back), so I set her up with Libby and checked the book's availability. The waiting period for it was way too long (four weeks, to be exact), so we decided to borrow Crazy Rich Asians instead – and since then, she's been religiously reading it every day to meet the 14-day deadline.
The most striking thing about this whole experience is that my mom's not a huge reader – this is the first time in years that she's ever picked up a book for some light reading! Yet I hear her laughter from across the hall, and sometimes she'd pass by my door and excitedly recount the tidbit/s that she found so funny and interesting.
That is what I miss about reading the most – being so excited about the story that I can't bring myself to put it down, or even just gush about it endlessly to some poor, unsuspecting victim (mostly friends who had no idea what the book was about). At first, I thought that I didn't have enough time to read books, so I got myself a few Mouse Books – and at first, I was diligently reading, but it came to a point where I got a bit overwhelmed about the theme they chose to focus on that I dropped it for a while. Then I remembered that I had a whole set of books I brought back with me from home (the shelf they're sitting on right now is my pride and joy), but it turns out that majority of them were 1) something I've already read in the past and 2) were mostly for collecting than reading.
Yes, I have the time to read. No, the length of the book doesn't matter. No, I can't re-read books in my current state. I refuse to believe that reading no longer holds importance to me because I always feel the urge to come back to it time and time again – I might just not be holding the right book at the right time. I've had a nagging suspicion that my taste in books have changed, but I don't know which direction I should go from there.
I also absolutely hate it when I don't finish a book, but more than that, I don't believe in continuing to read something when it's getting difficult to go past a page. I'm aware that those are two very contradicting ideas, and the quitter side of me is probably using this as an excuse not to pick up anything else (the most recent three books I willingly picked up were duds, sadly), but I've always been on board with this concept. Maybe I also make things difficult for myself.
But god, am I jealous. I am insanely jealous of my mom while she reads her limited-time-only library book. I also want to bury my face in a book or on my Kindle and feel alive – laugh, cry, and animatedly talk about the small details to an unsuspecting audience. Like a helpless romantic pining for their one true love, here's me, hoping that I can finally find that one true book.
PS: I have a Goodreads account! I haven't found a non-Amazon alternative to this, but if you want to, you can follow me there! Not that it'll get updated any time soon.
8/100
I'm currently doing a challenge called “100 Days to Offload” – you can join in the fun too by visiting https://100daystooffload.com
If you'd like, drop me a message here – I would be absolutely thrilled to hear from you!